Educated by Initiative: The Effects of Direct Democracy on Citizens and Political Organizations in the American States. By Daniel A. Smith and Caroline J. Tolbert. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2004. 252p. $65.00 cloth, $22.95 paper.

Throughout the mid-1980s, empirical state-level initiative studies were sufficiently rare that David Magleby's now classic book (Direct Legislation: Voting on Ballot Propositions in the United States, 1984) addressed topics as varied as the status of direct democracy laws, the impact of various cues on voting choices, and the readability of ballot pamphlets. Research on the initiative process subsequently burgeoned, and direct democracy has become one of the most widely considered aspects of state politics. Quantitative studies have focused especially on the substantive impact of the initiative process on public policy, as well as on the extent to which campaign contributions influence electoral outcomes.

The Invention of the United States Senate. By Daniel Wirls and Stephen Wirls. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. 288p. $49.95 cloth. $18.95 paper.

In a meeting in Moscow some years ago, the former Soviet Union's principal Americanologist, Georgi Arbatov, complained to me quite seriously, “We study your system, and we still do not know how it works.” Probably one reason for Arbatov's expressed puzzlement had to do with the role played in the American governmental system by the United States Senate, of which, at the time of our conversation, I was a member.

That Eminent Tribunal: Judicial Supremacy and the Constitution. Edited by Christopher Wolfe. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. 256 p. $55.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.

“Constitutional law professors have been very upset lately with the U.S. Supreme Court” (p. 181). So begins Keith E. Whittington's contribution to this collection of 11 essays on the subject of, in the words of the subtitle, “judicial supremacy and the Constitution.” Many in the unhappy chorus mentioned by Whittington are mainstream legal academicians who decry the conservative judicial activism sometimes practiced by the Rehnquist Court; they long for a robust activism in defense of liberal political values that characterized Warren and some Burger Era rulings. But the contributors to this book are not members of that chorus. Instead, most question or condemn the liberal activism preferred by the legal mainstream, while a few reject both styles of activism and hanker for a modest judicial role characterized by editor Christopher Wolfe as “traditional judicial review” (p. 202).

Explaining Foreign Policy: U.S. Decision-Making and the Persian Gulf War. By Steven A. Yetiv. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. 296p. $49.95 cloth, $19.95 paper.

Steven A. Yetiv faces a daunting task in this case study of the 1990–91 Persian Gulf War: applying and reconciling multiple approaches to foreign policy analysis in a single volume. He also hopes to clarify the historical record regarding President George H. W. Bush's performance in the diplomatic and military clash. While this ambitious study advances our understanding in both respects, it demonstrates how much further the field of foreign policy analysis must still progress to see clearly within the “black box” of state decision making.

Helping Children Left Behind: State Aid and the Pursuit of Educational Equality. Edited by John Yinger. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004. 145p. $40.00.

The role of state courts in defining educational finances is the focus of this book that results from a 2001 conference in the Maxwell School of Citizenship at Syracuse University. The author explores the role of state appellate courts since the seminal case of Serrano v. Priest (1971) challenging the constitutionality of local property taxation to fund local schools. About one-half of subsequent state courts followed suit, but the other half did not.

Civil Society and Political Change in Asia: Expanding and Contracting Democratic Space. Edited by Muthiah Alagappa. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004. 552p. $85.00 cloth, $34.95 paper.

Muthiah Alagappa has assembled an impressive number of essays in this volume, which is the product of two workshops in Honolulu and Phnom Penh held in 2002. It offers contributions covering 12 countries by 14 contributors, organized by country.

Electoral Competition and Institutional Change in Mexico. By Caroline C. Beer. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003. 208p. $45.00 cloth, $20.00 paper.

A growing literature argues that understanding Mexico's protracted transition from one-party rule requires exploring the dynamics of political competition as they emerged at the state and local levels. Caroline Beer makes an important contribution to this approach to Mexican democratization by examining state-level electoral competition in the 1990s and its impact on institutional development, particularly of state legislatures, and on political recruitment, especially of gubernatorial candidates. She argues that democratization resulted from a “complex interplay between opposition victories in subnational elections and important democratic advances in the national political arena” (pp. 9–10).

Interpreting British Governance. By Mark Bevir and R. A. W. Rhodes. New York: Routledge, 2003. 256p. $150.00 cloth, $40.95 paper.

Those tempted to pick up this volume and read a straightforward and unambiguous analysis of British governance in the modern era should consider the following: By the seventh page of the introductory chapter, the authors are engaged in a discussion of the contributions of Michel Foucault to postmodern and interpretive theory (giant, by the way), while narry a drop of ink has been spilled about either Britain or governance. In fact, this book will be of interest to many political scientists who are less than interested in the substantive case, but who are engaged in reflections about the epistemological characteristics of modern political science and the ontological claims that it makes. Interpreting British Governance is a fascinating entry into the debates that are raging in our profession, and it stakes out a clear set of claims in unequivocal terms.

The Nationalization of Politics: The Formation of National Electorates and Party Systems in Western Europe. By Daniele Caramani. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 347p. $75.00 cloth, $28.99 paper.

Daniele Caramani endeavors to document and explain the nationalization of party systems in Western Europe, the process by which the localized and territorialized politics of the nineteenth century (clientelistic politics dominated by local personalities) was replaced by nationwide functional alignments on the basis of class, in particular. This nationalization process was a crucial step in the structuring of party systems in the first century of electoral (democratic) politics. Although central to Western European electoral developments, it has received little scholarly attention, a gap that Caramani means to fill through empirical verification.

Native to the Nation: Disciplining Landscapes and Bodies in Australia. By Allaine Cerwonka. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004. 269p. $74.95 cloth, $24.95 paper.

It is unusual for a book on Australia to be written by an outsider and published by an American press. This is to be welcomed. Outsiders are often free of local myths and attitudes, which are well entrenched in Australia, despite its character as a relatively new nation. Allaine Cerwonka did intensive fieldwork in two inner-city suburbs of Melbourne, Australia's second city. As a resident for 10 years in neighboring Carlton, I found her sensitivity to the nuances of the complex areas of East Melbourne and Fitzroy quite unusual.

Shocking Mother Russia: Democratization, Social Rights, and Pension Reform in Russia, 1990–2001. By Andrea Chandler. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. 260p. $60.00.

The pension system of a given state is a mirror that reflects many dimensions of that state's political processes, political and social values, historical experience, and economic conditions. Had Andrea Chandler presented her analysis of Russian pension politics oriented toward those four categories or analogous ones, her study would have been much more understandable and would have made a greater contribution to our understanding of post–Soviet Russian politics. Instead, Chandler presents a mostly chronologically based account of Russian pension politics that makes a significant contribution to the subject but one that is harder to understand than it needs to be. The reader must tease out the important themes, such as democratization, from a book that is more chronological than thematic. Shocking Mother Russia is less than the sum of its valuable parts.

Voter Turnout and the Dynamics of Electoral Competition in Established Democracies Since 1945. By Mark N. Franklin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 294p. $70.00 cloth, $24.99 paper.

According to Mark Franklin, “As the vexing questions of political science can be regarded as puzzles, the particular topic of voter turnout could be called the ‘grand enchilada’ of puzzles of political science…. [A]lmost everything about voter turnout is puzzling, from the question of why anyone bothers to vote at all to the question of why certain variables appear to explain voter turnout in some circumstances but not in others.” He makes this bold but true statement in the preface (p. xi) of his comparative study of turnout in more than 20 established democracies since World War II. Voter turnout is one of the more frequently studied topics in political science, but the results of all these scholarly efforts remain rather poor and unsatisfactory. We still know distressingly little about why some people vote and others do not, why turnout is much higher in some countries than in others, and why in so many countries there seems to be a steady and irrevocable decline in turnout in national elections.

Judicial Review and Bureaucratic Impact: International and Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Edited by Marc Hertogh and Simon Halliday. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 328p. $90.00 cloth, $39.99 paper.

The impact of judicial decisions on bureaucracy is poorly understood. Some claim that court judgments have little or no effect. In contrast, others worry that judges will usurp the policymaking role of the political branches and override the expertise and experience of civil servants. As this thoughtful and wide-ranging collection of papers demonstrates, both claims are exaggerated.

Becoming Europe: Immigration, Integration, and the Welfare State. By Patrick Ireland. Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 2004. 288p. $27.95.

Patrick Ireland begins this detailed and clearly presented discussion about belonging in relation to patterns of European Union migration by raising a critical issue with the concept of ethnicity, defined as a “collective group consciousness that imparts a sense of belonging derived from membership in a community bound putatively by common descent and culture” (pp. 2–3). Ireland's study finds that belonging is context specific, rather than derived from common descent. This finding implies that there is by definition no readily available general policy applicable to one type of immigrants, say, Turks or Moroccans across all EU member states. Instead, each country's possibilities for integration differ. To Ireland, ethnicity “is not so much a category as a dynamic, elastic entity. Its value as a social, economic, and political resource varies; the appraisal depends considerably on institutions and policies.” (pp. 4–5).

Before Norms: Institutions and Civic Culture. By Robert W. Jackman and Ross A. Miller. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004. 262p. $70.00 cloth, $22.95 paper.

With this volume, Robert Jackman and Ross Miller pursue a twofold ambition. First, they want to demonstrate that most of the research on political culture and the impact of values on political behavior can be questioned, both on theoretical as on methodological grounds. Second, they want to demonstrate that their theoretical model, based on the assumption that actors optimize their behavior within durable institutional restraints, is better able to explain what people do with regard to politics.

The Rules of Federalism: Institutions and Regulatory Politics in the EU and Beyond. By Daniel Kelemen. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. 256p. $49.95.

In this engaging, clearly written volume, Daniel Kelemen synthesizes and elaborates a theoretical model that contributes to several literatures. As a study of the European Union, it stands at the logical endpoint of a growing trend toward the application of analytical tools drawn from conventional comparative politics. As an account of governmental institutions, the broad analytic narrative breaks new ground in sorting out the consequences of federalism. As an analysis of public policy, especially environmental policy, the book offers a new argument about the institutional sources of regulatory politics.

Immigration and Politics in the New Europe: Reinventing Borders. By Gallya Lahav. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 334p. $75.00 cloth, $27.99 paper.

In this book, Gallya Lahav offers a nuanced account of the nascent and dynamic Europeanization of migration policy. Moving beyond scholarship that narrowly casts migration as a contest between supranational and domestic constraints, Lahav depicts the prospects for collective European migration policymaking as a product of “emergent consensual attitudes on restrictive policies, among elites and mass publics alike” (p. 9). By “bringing attitudes back in,” her treatment offers a welcome complement to intergovernmentalist and neofunctionalist accounts of migration policy and reminds readers that as policymakers grapple with the domestic and international challenges of contemporary immigration, cooperation may be of a negative or restrictive sort.

Transatlantic Policymaking in an Age of Austerity: Diversity and Drift. Edited by Martin A. Levin and Martin Shapiro. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2004. 344p. $29.95 paper.

In an age when we are aware of our increasing global connections with one another, it is only fitting that we should observe the larger similarities that we may share with other nations in the realm of policymaking. In this book, editors Martin A. Levin and Martin Shapiro argue that policymakers on both the conservative and liberal side of the spectrum are so concerned about courting undecided voters who take a “middle of the road” stance that they often compromise bold or innovative policy initiatives in the name of moderation to attract these neutral voters. To complicate matters, most governments are facing austere conditions—which suggests that while demographic and political forces shape policymaking, economic variables play a pivotal role as well. The end result of this complex scenario is that policymakers are more likely to be conformists than trailblazers.

Downsizing the State: Privatization and the Limits of Neoliberal Reform in Mexico. By Dag MacLeod. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004. 320p. $65.00 cloth, $29.00 paper.

Democratization Without Representation: The Politics of Small Industry in Mexico. By Kenneth C. Shadlen. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004. 224p. $65.00 cloth, $27.00 paper.

Mexico's dramatic shift from state-led development to neoliberalism in the 1980s and subsequent transition to democracy in the 1990s has been the subject of extensive scholarly research. These two well-researched and empirically rich books further our understanding of these important processes by providing in-depth analyses of privatization and the decline of small industry. They represent a new generation of scholarship that presents a long-term perspective on Mexico's political economy, beginning with the emergence of state-led development and corporatism in the early twentieth century through to the contemporary era of neoliberalism and multiparty democracy.

Trust and Democratic Transition in Post-Communist Europe. Edited by Ivana Markova. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. 232p. $65.00.

This is a frustrating volume. That trust is important to democratic transition is its central assumption, but only the final chapter asks whether it is true or why it should be. Instead, most of the chapters discuss how the communist experience affected relations of trust. But some chapters make claims about communist society that generalize solely from the Stalinist period, while others concern the experiences of particular countries to a point where the precise relationship to communism is left unclear. In the end, the only unifying aspect of the book is each chapter's discussion of some aspect of trust in relation to some aspect of the former Soviet bloc.